“After she eats,” Clay said.

Elena smiled. “Always the top concern. Can we grab you guys something?”

I said we were fine and they continued on.

“I disagree,” Lucas was saying to a white-haired man as we walked into the boardroom. “If Lucifer is going to communicate through Hope, why would he speak in languages she doesn’t understand?”

“It is possible,” the man said. “We have accounts—”

“Minor demons,” Adam interjected. “None from lords, right?”

The old man scowled at him. “We have very few accounts of lord demons communicating with anyone at all.”

“Eight confirmed cases in the last fifty years,” Adam said.

“Aside from the times they hooked up with human women, when I’m sure they did plenty of talking, though not necessarily in Latin … unless they were trying to seduce a member of the debating team.”

The old man’s scowl deepened.

I said hi to Lucas as we sat. He looked tired, but managed a rare smile for me.

“Lucas and I have talked about Hope’s earlier visions,” Adam said. “I agree that it’s not Lucifer attempting contact. More on that later. For now, we need to bump up the number of confirmed lord demon visits. I called this meeting because I have new information, and it came directly from Asmondai, not twenty minutes ago.”

Adam waited for everyone to digest that, then said, “From Bryce, we had an idea what the plan was. Take this virus and turn key people into supernaturals. From the test results, we know they’re using vampire and werewolf DNA and likely zombie. Presumably, then, they’re hoping to not just make these guys regular supernaturals, but to give them the superhero treatment. Semi-immortality and invulnerability from vampires. Heightened senses and physical strength from werewolves. Prolonged youth from both. The best we’ve got to offer in one package. If it works, those who get it are going to be thinking this supernatural stuff ain’t so bad, meaning they aren’t going to argue to lock the rest of us up.”

Paige nodded. “Because they’ll be one of us, too. So they’re choosing men and women who’d have some say in how revealed supernaturals are treated. Politicians, I presume.”

Adam shook his head. “Eventually, but according to Asmondai, their first targets are deeper sources of power. Money men. Guys with deep pockets and lots of clout. Would that work? I have no idea. But I’m thinking we don’t want to find out. We need to get to the targets before they do.”

“Wonderful,” one of the VPs said. “And how do you propose we do that? Determine the most powerful financial leaders in America and hope these terrorists use the same criteria?”

“No. Asmondai gave us names. He wants this stopped and thinks we can do it. There are two initial test cases. Two more will follow immediately after.”

“Good,” Benicio said, getting to his feet. “We’ll get there before they strike and establish round-the-clock surveillance. We’ll be ready for them.”

“We need to dispatch those teams now,” I said. “According to Asmondai, they’re hitting the first two tonight.”

THIRTY-ONE

I was heading back into the field. Adam, Elena, and Clay were going with me, so I’d be well protected on all sides. Also, we were in serious shit and already overextended. They needed everyone out there.

While Asmondai had been very helpful, there was a lot he couldn’t know. How exactly did SLAM plan to do this? How long would they wait after the two test cases before hitting the next two? And, most important, what were the risks of this injection? Bryce said they called it a virus. How did it spread? It wasn’t airborne, it seemed, or even spread by close contact—I’d had lots of contact with Bryce when I was getting him out of the lab and I was fine. Did it spread at all? Or was “virus” just a convenient name?

The linguists were still working on Hope’s message. They’d deciphered most of it. Now the problem was figuring out what it meant. It seemed to be about a place … if the person describing it was a sideshow fortune-teller. A winding road. Fields of gold. A house in ruins. Cows in a meadow. That could describe a million locations in America alone. Really not helpful.

But we had as much as we were getting for now.

Lucas, Paige, Jeremy, and Jaime were going after one of the initial test cases in Dallas. Adam, Elena, Clay, and I were taking the other in Austin. There would be a security team dispatched to each city with us, but this wasn’t a “swoop in with a SWAT team” kind of mission. The bulk of the Cortez and Boyd security forces—along with Cassandra, Aaron, Sean, and others—were being sent to track down and begin surveil-lance on the second wave of targets.

In just over an hour, we were at the airfield, bags in hand. We were going to Austin. Cassandra and Aaron were with us—they were heading to Houston to meet a security team and monitor a second-wave subject. Yep, there’s money in Texas.

The leaders of the Austin and Houston contingent were on the jet, too. They kept their distance, though. They obviously weren’t comfortable being so close to werewolves.

The easiest way to thwart the Austin attack would be to kidnap the target—Maurice B. Lester, head of Lester Oil. Yet that wouldn’t help us catch those who planned to infect him. If he wasn’t available, they could move on to Lester’s wife and kids—the next best thing to infecting a bigwig is to infect his loved ones, which guarantees he won’t be advocating universal imprisonment for supernaturals.

In the end, we were stuck with the simplest and most frustrating plan. Watch and wait.

After half a day of following Maurice Lester, we’d been at BJ’s BBQ for an hour now. Lester and his party had only just ordered dinner. We’d almost finished eating in a side room, where we were out of sight, but Elena and Clay could follow the conversation at Lester’s table.

“I’m sure the discussion is fascinating,” Clay said, “if you give a shit about oil.”

“Antonio appreciates it,” Elena said as she tapped her phone. “I’m texting him stock tips. Get a few pitchers of beer in these guys and they forget they aren’t alone in the place.”

“No,” Adam said. “They just don’t care. Only people they can see are minimum-wage servers and a table of college kids. Their stock tips are safe.”